The First Being

Rabbi Hoshaya the Great opened: "Then I was beside Him as a nursling (amon), and I was a delight day by day" (Proverbs 8:30). Amon means a tutor; amon means covered; amon means hidden; and there are some who say amon means great. Another interpretation: amon means a craftsman (uman). The Torah says: I was the working instrument of the Holy One, blessed be He. In the way of the world, when a king of flesh and blood builds a palace, he does not build it from his own knowledge but from the knowledge of a craftsman, and the craftsman does not build it from his own knowledge but has scrolls and tablets, to know how he is to make the rooms and how he is to make the doorways. So too the Holy One, blessed be He, was looking into the Torah and creating the world. And the Torah said, "In the beginning God created" (Genesis 1:1), and "beginning" means nothing other than the Torah, just as you say, "The LORD acquired me as the beginning of His way" (Proverbs 8:22).